The Grand Axis: Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre
The ceremonial spine of Paris on foot — Arc, Champs-Élysées, the two palais, the obelisk, the Tuileries. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Arc de Triomphe
Use the underpass — never cross the roundabout on the surface. Stand under the arch for the scale, read Napoleon's victories on the piers, and decide whether you want the rooftop. The climb (about 280 steps) gives you the twelve avenues fanning out below; skip it and the arch itself still earns the start.

2. Upper Champs-Élysées (the garden end)
Walk down on the leafy upper stretch toward Concorde — this end keeps the chestnut trees and the calm the lower shopping run has lost. Cross to the south side near the Grand Palais for the better walking.

3. Grand Palais & Petit Palais
The two glass-and-stone halls built for the 1900 World's Fair, facing each other across avenue Winston-Churchill. The Petit Palais is a free city museum and a genuinely good one; its inner courtyard garden is the rest stop nobody knows about.

4. Place de la Concorde & the obelisk
The largest square in Paris, and the one where the guillotine stood. The 3,000-year-old Luxor obelisk marks the centre; from beside it the whole axis lines up — arch behind you, Louvre ahead. Mind the traffic crossing in.

5. Jardin des Tuileries
Off the road at last. Catherine de' Medici's garden, formalised by Le Nôtre — gravel walks, the round ponds with their green metal chairs, sculpture among the trees. Drag a chair to the water and stop for ten minutes; everyone does.

6. Louvre pyramid
The garden delivers you to the Tuileries' eastern end and the Arc du Carrousel, then I. M. Pei's glass pyramid in the Cour Napoléon. Stand where the whole axis ends. Palais Royal–Musée du Louvre on the M1/M7 is your way out.

The Grand Axis: Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre